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This article seeks a middle path, arguing that we must develop better understanding of the construction and circulation of social media data to evaluate their appropriate uses and the claims that might be made from them. Building on sociotechnical approaches, we propose a high-level abstraction of the \u2018pipeline\u2019 through which social media data are constructed and circulated. In turn, we explore how this shapes the populations and samples that are present in social media data and the methods that generate data about them. We conclude with some broad principles for supporting methodologically informed social media research in the future. <\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1177\/1461444817748953","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2018,1,1]],"date-time":"2018-01-01T07:55:08Z","timestamp":1514793308000},"page":"3341-3358","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1177\/sage-journals-update-policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":16,"title":["Understanding the production and circulation of social media data: Towards methodological principles and praxis"],"prefix":"10.1177","volume":"20","author":[{"given":"Susan","family":"Halford","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"University of Southampton, UK"}]},{"given":"Mark","family":"Weal","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"University of Southampton, UK"}]},{"given":"Ramine","family":"Tinati","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"University of Southampton, UK"}]},{"given":"Les","family":"Carr","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"University of Southampton, UK"}]},{"given":"Catherine","family":"Pope","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"University of Southampton, UK"}]}],"member":"179","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2017,12,31]]},"reference":[{"key":"bibr1-1461444817748953","unstructured":"Anderson C (2008) The end of theory: the data deluge makes the scientific method obsolete. 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